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Sweet, Sticky & Spicy Purple Long Beans

10.11.11

Sweet, Sticky & Spicy Purple Long Beans

My little town (home town) like many other towns has a weekly farmers market. It has farmers from all neighboring villages selling their fresh produce. My Grandma visits this market every week and buys all her vegetables from there. She says (and she is right) that it has the freshest vegetables. This week I joined her! I have posted some photos of our market here on ‘Love Food Eat’s Facebook page. ‘Like’ me on FB for more than just recipes

Purple Long Beans in the farmers market!

I have always loved Shopping for vegetables! While I was walking around enjoying all those farm fresh produce, a bunch of purple long beans caught my attention. Regular green long beans are a staple in most kitchens here but the purple ones are not available often. They looked beautiful and I had to buy them.

I couldn’t wait to get to the kitchen and try cooking something new with these long beans. I had never eaten them before too.Once again vegetables this fresh taste great no matter how they are cooked. There was very little time left for lunch so I decided on a quick stir fry. For some reason colour of these beans made me want to make them spicy and sweet. I felt like they will taste great when they are sticky sweet with a hint of heat. I went out to the garden and picked some fiery little birds eye chilies. Their red Hotness was great with the caramel-like earthy sweetness of the Jaggery.

Birds eye chilies in our garden

Do not underestimate them! These little chilies are HOT

These glorious purple beauties turned dark and almost black when cooked. They look so exotic against some white rice! They are slightly chewier than the green ones and have a great ‘bite’ left in them even after cooking. These sticky sweet ones were refreshing after having tried several stir fries (considering how often I make it) with Indian spices. Try the same recipe with regular long beans or even green beans. I am sure many other vegetables will taste great like this. Pumpkin? Why not Replace Jaggery with brown sugar and birds eye chilies with any other red chili, it’ll not taste the same but it’ll sure taste great!

Heat the oil in a pan. When hot add the crushed chilies and jaggery. When the jaggery starts melting and caramelizing add the chopped long beans. Toss for everything to coat well. Sprinkle with salt mix everything once again. Cover and cook in low flame. After 2 minutes open and check if there is enough moisture for it to cook. If not sprinkle some water. Do not overcook it. Serve hot with rice or Roti.

17 comments :

could not find jaggery but used brown sugar – was lovely; however, my beautiful purple beans (self-grown) turned green on cooking!! Is this normal? They were delicious nonetheless – thanks for the recipe.

those red chilies look so cute.. lovely clicks chinmayie!. we dont get these beans here.. but its a breath of fresh air to see all these local exquisite veggies and leaves and such you have been using. its a reminder to look through my own loca markets and use the beautiful squashes and things that are in season!

It’s so neat that they kept there color! I grew some purple podded pole beans this year that looked great on the vine, but when they cooked, turned back to green. It was a little disappointing. What is jaggery? This totally looks like something right up mine and my husband’s alley…though my kids probably couldn’t handle the heat. Does your daughter like spicy (hot) foods?

Jaggery is unrefined cane sugar. It’s available in semi solid and solid form. Check your local Indian grocery store for it, it’s delicious by itself
My daughter can’t handle any spice in her food. I use to use a lot of spice in my cooking earlier but now I hardly use any…

Such simple and quick recipe..and with jaggery..oh man…this is wonderful. I make curries with this bean sometime adding potatoes too. But this version is really something I would love to try and treasure.
And yes shopping for fresh veggies is one of my passion too …nothing like watching fresh products straight from the farm.